Diddy Cup v Morton

I'm sure like most of us Davie will have watched Morton against Ayr on Friday night.They caused the Honest Men a few problems.Dougie Imrie Cameron Blues and Morgan Boyes will no doubt hope to come back and put one over us.Suspect Davie will rest one or two before the main event on Saturday against the Bairns.Not the be all and end off this one.Hopefully the fringe players come in and raise their games.Suspect Imrie will have his strongest 11 possible for this.Cant take them lightly,but hopefully being at home will see us progress to the semi's of this tournament.Mon.the Lions..

We need to be better than when we drew with them in the league. Hopefully beating Accies has given them the confidence to attack from the start

Should've still beaten them in the league game, missed an absolute sitter, prob miss of the season, and it looked like Nottingham's header was over the line but didn't get given.

Just want more of what i saw from us in the highlights against Accies, quick direct passing, and having shots at goal. If we do that we'll create enough chances to win the game, and entertain the fans while doing it. Isn't much to ask really.

Yeah but we still weren’t that good that day, so we need to be better

Auld Nick wrote:Yeah but we still weren’t that good that day, so we need to be better

We weren't much better but won it this time, should've been 3 or 4 with Yengi missing some chances, but a comfortable enough win despite Morton's late consolation goal. May made a big difference when he came on, we looked a lot more threatening, and opened them up for quite a few chances.

Into the semis we go, playing Dunfrmline away, lets hope it's not a repeat of our last game there.

It wasn’t a great performance bar that five or ten minute spell near the end where we missed multiple clear cut chances in quick succession. Other than that it was the usual huffing and puffing without creating much allied with sloppy mistakes. Pitaluga was impressive in goals, great double save late in the first half and some good handling of crosses. The subs made a big difference, not surprising though as they were mostly the usual starters. Of the fringe players, McAlear probably shone most. I do like Green but wish he’d attempt more incisive passes rather than spraying the ball from side to side. Stevie May is far and away our best striker, just hope St Johnstone aren’t able to take him back in January.

Denman wrote:It wasn’t a great performance bar that five or ten minute spell near the end where we missed multiple clear cut chances in quick succession. Other than that it was the usual huffing and puffing without creating much allied with sloppy mistakes. Pitaluga was impressive in goals, great double save late in the first half and some good handling of crosses. The subs made a big difference, not surprising though as they were mostly the usual starters. Of the fringe players, McAlear pro bably shone most. I do like Green but wish he’d attempt more incisive passes rather than spraying the ball from side to side. Stevie May is far and away our best striker,just hope St Johnstone aren’t able to take him back in January.

St Johnstone's problems are in defence, attack wise they've Sidibeh and Kimpioka, the latter is the top scoring striker in the league, and both are well ahead of May in the pecking order, so can't see him going back to them this season.

Hope you’re right, there’s always the chance their new manager may want to assess all his options though. May brings the experience that the other two lack.

What did folk think of that excuse of a referee? I see we had 20 fouls to their 10 in what was anything but a dirty game. At one point he let play go for about seven or eight passes before deciding to bring it back to what was an innocuous stumble by a Morton player yet in almost the exact same circumstances later in the game when a Livi player was fouled he did nothing. That was just one instance of one sided refereeing. All we ask is consistency but the present batch of whistlers don't know the meaning of the word.

Ref was the usual unemployed clown given a whistle  to entertain the audience.

I actually enjoyed the first half, I thought we had some good spells of play with some good movement, Morton for their part defended us well. One of our good passages of play brought the opener.

Second half I thought we dropped off a bit until May came on and then we really started opening them up.
I missed the build up to May’s goal, looked up in time to see him take a stride and pick his spot. Morton’s late goal was also well worked from their point of view.

Overall, I think we were much better in this game than in the 1-1 draw.

What I like about Green is that he looks to move it on quickly, that often means passing to the side. When he played against Dunfermline he was spraying passes of various lengths all over the pitch and was the metronome dictating the tempo. Last night Morton were a level above that Dunfermline side so they didn’t allow him as much time to do what he can and were closing him down before he could pick out a forward, so he did the simple thing and kept possession (most of the time). He also is clearly communicating to other players telling them who is open for a pass, including himself. No one else in our team does that.

McAlear had his best game for us so far.

Winter occupied the defence and pressed well.

Sole showed flashes of what he can do but looked despondent going off, not sure if he did an ankle when he went over going for the ball, he beat the ground in frustration at the time, or was just diassapointed to not be given the full 90 mins.

What I would like to see us try, especially when we play with Muirhead, May & Yengi up front, is for those 3 to rotate positions, they are all capable of playing across the front line and would bring different challenges for the central defenders.

Felt we we're a bit sloppy at times last night,and made it hard for ourselves against a decent Morton side.Their boy Moffat was giving me the fear everytime he pulled in from the wing.Apparently on loan from Celtic,looks a prospect for them.Thought our fringe players put in a decent shift and did their chances no harm whatsoever.Feel we will need to be at full strength for Saturday and weve got to take any chances that fall to us,especially Yengi.Any way we're through and that's all that matters.We move on.

Started brightly and carried on with the direct play up front that i saw in the Accies highlights Nick, but it dropped right off after 10 mins or so, back to the usual nonsense, till we suddenly burst forward to score. Right at the start of the game we put in a great ball across the 6 yard box that should've been turned in by Winter, would've been a cracking start. Nice passage of play and finish for McAlear's goal, shows what we can do when we move the ball forward and have a shot.

Winter did ok but you really saw the difference in quality when May came on, suddenly we burst into life attacking them, could've had 3 or 4 goals in that spell. It was 7 changes from our usual starting line up though, so great result being able to rotate so many players and still get a win. Oh and a few good saves by Pitaluga, his kicking was a bit suspect, with the low sideways kick going straight to Morton players, but his shot stopping was very good.